Apple's New AirPort Extreme Offers No Innovation

[robertwebbe]

Donation

Tim,

Since a lot of us really like to see a review soon, can we maybe help you with a donation?
It's easy to setup a Paypal donation account and I guess 200 USD is not that hard to reach.

Robert

 

[thiggins]

I know you know about this

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...al-bus/usb3-frequency-interference-paper.html

because I read about it in one of your reviews! Maybe they decided the extra shielding was not worth the expense.

Perhaps. Could also be RamGuy's point about not competing with Time Capsule.

As for Anti Apple Bias: I know you are fair and balanced, to steal that almost copyrighted phrase, but: I feel it too. Word choice, tone....

Since when are reviewers not allowed to have a point of view?

The Gen5 AAE did very well in testing, and is priced pretty close to its competitors. A little premium? Sure, but, it has long been one of the top selling routers at Amazon.

Other routers have done as well or better and cost less.

People are willing to pay more for a product that works. The AAE firmware is really stable, easy to config, and just works. A router is hardware AND software, and you have to admit, Apple does that pretty well. (OK, you don't HAVE to.)

Absolutely. I understand Apple has a perception of higher reliability. But I'd love to see the actual data (for everyone else's routers too).

As for a freebie router from Apple to review it: isn't that an inherent conflict of interest? Yes, I know you will do fair objective tests but: is Asus giving you a lot of free routers? I know their stuff is good, I recommend that too, but: well Asus routers get a lot of press here.

Getting loaner product from manufacturers is the way it is done in general. Aside from Consumer Reports, that's how the system works.

SmallNetBuilder enjoys the respect it has among companies because vendors know a good review can't be bought. Not by free product. Not by advertising. Not by anything.

Companies that submit product know that they will get a thorough, unbiased and fact-based review.

And no, ASUS does not give me a lot of free routers. I bought the last RT-N66U I needed for a retest, even though they offered one.

I don't think ASUS gets any more coverage than other companies. ASUS topics are responsible for a lot of Forum activity, mainly due to RMerlin.

BTW: I recommend your site every day, and link to it, so....just sayin.

Thanks.

As for the cost of testing routers: after you are done, assuming you needed to take it apart and didn't destroy it: you have a broad readership, you could sell it, and the net cost of testing would go down.

Not worth the hassle to sell them. That's why I run contests to give product away that manufacturers don't want returned. And selling vendor-supplied product would be unethical. (I know you were referring to purchased product. I just wanted to make the point crystal clear.)

Thanks for all you do!

You're welcome. Thanks for reading.

 

[thiggins]

Tim,

Since a lot of us really like to see a review soon, can we maybe help you with a donation?
It's easy to setup a Paypal donation account and I guess 200 USD is not that hard to reach.

Robert

Thanks. But SNB can afford it to buy the product.

 

[HawkFire]

Why high power routers dont improve range.....

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...r that information. Very useful to know. :D

 

[claykin]

Thanks. But SNB can afford it to buy the product.

So I suspect Tim plans to suck it up and buy the new Airport Extreme for test. Look forward to the read.

BTW Tim, I've had a couple setups that for one reason or another didn't want to work reliably with the WNDR3700 or 4500 in AP mode. I eventually got fed up trying to make them work and changed to Airport Extreme's. In all cases problems pretty much non existent with Extreme's.

Hardware may not be better than the competition, but I suspect Apple has solid firmware.

 

[bleomycin]

This is clearly too small of a sample size to be statistically relevant, but i've had 6 airport extremes of various generations over the years and all of them are still going strong today with 0 problems. To contrast that, i've bought at least 10 high end soho routers from competitors and either stuck with the default software, dd-wrt, openwrt, gargoyle, or a tomato variant and over half of them have developed some type of hardware related reliability issue.

I've switched over entirely to only buying apple airports for my wifi needs because i can count on them not to be flakey. I've always used pfsense for routing as I know it is bulletproof, finding a non-apple access point that is just as reliable proved to be impossible. I do have some ubiquiti UniFi AP AC's on order and I hope they will be reliable as their seamless roaming feature set could finally retire the apple hardware for me. For the time being I picked up the latest airport extreme and i'm quite pleased to be getting ~448Mbit/s transferring files over NFS on 11.ac to my macbook air. I look forward to reading your review!

 

[etaggart]

New AirPort Extreme

Just got the Airport Extreme and replaced a Linksys EA6500 (AC1750). Seems to have better range than the Linksys based on my anecdotal experience. Works great with OSX Server where OSX server recognizes the Airport and allows you to open ports on the Airport to the Server through Server.app. Supports L2TP VPN inbound which is nice.

No comprehensive DHCP client list though and guest access uses WPA/WPA2 or no authentication. Would like to see a web page based authentication for guest.

 

[nocturne1]

This is the first router I've ever seen that the internals appear to have been designed with as much care and quality as Apple's MB/MBP devices. I look forward to seeing how this performs.

 

[jb510]

Usb 2

I used to lament USB 2 on 11ac routers, but I have yet to see a router with enough CPU performance to saturate USB 2. Therefore I don't quite see what the problem with USB 2 is at this point, USB 3 isn't going to be any faster.

Further the post seems to just be a long winded setup so the blogger can take a dig at Apple customers. Lame.

 

[thiggins]

I used to lament USB 2 on 11ac routers, but I have yet to see a router with enough CPU performance to saturate USB 2. Therefore I don't quite see what the problem with USB 2 is at this point, USB 3 isn't going to be any faster.

you make a good point. But our tests show routers with USB 3 do produce higher filecopy throughput.

 

[robertwebbe]

Tim, when can we expect the full review?

 

[thiggins]

Sometime after July 8

 

[SamS]

Sometime after July 8

I look forward to reading your review.

 

[Grievous Angel]

I just replaced my 4th Gen AE with the ASUS AC router. Primarily because I wanted more coverage in the house, which it has provided in spades. Places where I was lucky to get a signal now have full coverage. And the ASUS administration seemed to offer more flexibility than the Airport utility. My purchase decision was heavily influenced by the reviews on this site.

Maybe the newer ones have better range and coverage--and to be fair I never had an issue with the AE after several years. Always a little annoyed about having to have a fat client and that dumb Bonjour service installed to administer it, but it is what it is.

But my general distaste for Apple has left me with this one final purge. I'm now down to a couple of iPods.

I'll keep the AE around for a backup--because admittedly the ASUS routers seem to be more of a gamble.

 

[RamGuy]

The Apple AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule seems to have all basic features that a consumer router should have. Obviously you have to relay on the AirPort Utility to set it up which could be both a blessing and a curse depending on how the user likes to do things.

Apple is Apple though, so things like DMZ seems to be named "Enable Default Host at", and Dynamic DNS is named "Global Dynamic Hostname" and whatnot but all the features seems to be there just named differently.

The only thing I can't seem to wrap my head around is whether it actually comes with upnp support or not? Could someone please verify this, because no upnp might be a pain in the butt for people running loads of various devices relaying on upnp if you don't wont to go through the hassle of manually enabling port forwards for all your devices.


EDIT:

I see someone mention "bonjure" as Apples upnp solution. Does that mean bonjure is just Apples naming of upnp or is it something that only actual Apple devices supports?

 

[FrancoisC]

If i'm not mistaken, apple's router uses "NAT-PMP" (as UPNP replacement)

 

[revenent_101]

Been using numerous different brands of wireless routers for years and tinkering with them, installing numerous different custom firmware and honestly...none of them are problem free. In all instances i had to restart them almost weekly and in some instances on a daily basis. I do not own apple products at that time so my first product i got from them was an airport express G. Surprisingly at that time...i no longer need to cycle power off and on up until today. Yes it is still working. Just that coverage isn't that fantastic since it hiding behind a TV console.

Using that silly program just to configure the device is crazy and inconvenient. But i admit, it gave me zero problems since the switch. I am looking forward to this new wireless product. Think its about time i upgrade.

 

[stevech]

Opinion: Want the best reliability? Don't buy a mass market WiFi router such as Netgear, D-Link, Linksys, etc. Some are good. Most have poorly tested firmware.

The alternative: I use a Cradlepoint MBR900. It's older now, and the company has newer products. I found mine on eBay for under $100. Most all cost a bit more because they support a cellular modem (USB) that you plug in as needed, for fall-back. I've used mine a few times when TimeWarner was kaput for hours on end. Same USB modem that I use with the laptop. The MBR900 doesn't have gigE LAN ports - but I use a gigE switch so that matters not. My ISP speed is no where near 100mbps.

Cradlepoint (and Sierra Wireless and a few others) sell mostly to the point of sale market and machine to machine markets. And libraries, for police car trunks, and so on. These WiFi router vendors tend to keep maturing the same firmware year to year, whereas the consumer guys seem to start anew with most every new product. Maybe because they tend to buy on the spot market in Asia.

I use these on projects at work - they do well. And have all the features you can think of, and more.

At home, mine just runs. I never think about it.

 

[phrehdd]

The main advantage of the dual-core processors is not improved wireless performance or faster routing, but better concurrent feature handling.

File transfer throughput on some USB 3.0 routers isn't too bad now. So the dual-core CPUs should help keep that speed high when the router is busy with other tasks. I do have to test this, however.

A good, and obvious point. Apple doesn't want the Extreme to eat into Time Capsule sales.

I tend to agree that Apple has always had a thing for "positioning" or placement within a marketing plan. A USB3 enabled AE would detract from Apple's marketing of their Time Capsule version. This type of crippling of hardware can be seen in some of their computer lines as well and in turn, forces people to make sacrifices when none should have to be made.

I have two "N" AEs sitting on the shelf. I don't use either of them anymore. After Apple's last software upgrade for the routers, it is two steps backwards when it comes to tweaking. I use now a 7 port wireless N router that while not quite the most advanced in terms of admin tools, it is far superior to the AE in terms of usability, and as good if not better on wireless speed as well.

While I do use Mac, I am always frustrated with their tactics on forcing us to go without on some devices.

 

[stevech]

Apple Knows What's Best For Their Devotes.
Just don't literally drink the cool-aid.